the market parking lot
In her immaculate kitchen she said, “Yes I’ve changed. I realized I was being awfully sloppy and self-indulgent. It’s no disgrace to be a good homemaker. I’ve decided to do my job conscientiously, the way Dave does his, and to be more careful about my appearance. Are you sure you don’t want a sandwich?”
Joanna shook her head. “Bobbie,” she said. “I—Don’t you see what’s happened? Whatever’s around here—it’s got you, the way it got Charmaine.”
Bobbie smiled at her. “Nothing’s got me,” she said. “There’s nothing around. That was a lot of nonsense. Stepford’s a fine, healthy place to live.”
from The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin
bad environments
Why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments?
Why do people often feel so bad in good environments that they prefer bad environments?
Why is it that a man riding a good commuter train from Larchmont to New York, whose needs and drives are satisfied, who has a good home, loving wife and family, good job, who has unprecedented “cultural and recreational facilities,” often feels bad without knowing why.
(Walker Percy via Spalding Gray)
apologies to mister fuller
“There is nothing in the chemistry of a toenail that predicts the existence of a human being. “–R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
okay… that went down easy . . .are you ready for more?
“Thinking itself consists of self-disciplined dismissal of both the macrocosmic and microcosmic irrelevancies which leaves only the lucidly-relevant considerations. The macrocosmic irrelevancies are all the events too large and too infrequent to be synchronizably tuneable in any possible way with our consideration (a beautiful word meaning putting stars together). The microcosmic irrelevancies are all the events which are obviously too small and too frequent to be differentially resolved in any way or to be sychronizably-tunable within the lucidly-relevant wave-frequency limits of the system we are considering.”
marty . . . bobby
“The actors, whether by technique or accident, gave you pieces of their lives, which is certainly the ultimate generosity of the artist, and they did it unabashed. You were the witness to a final intimacy. These artists spoke to your secret self, the one you hide. They offered you more than cleverness or technique. They gave you the genuine thing, the thing that hurt you as it thrilled you.” Elia Kazan
